THREATS AND RESPONSES: ARRESTS

THREATS AND RESPONSES: ARRESTS; Arrests and Plots Give South Africans a New Problem

By MICHAEL WINES

Published: August 9, 2004

JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 8—
A string of international arrests of South African citizens, followed by sensational reports in the last week of terrorist plots against tourism and financial sites, is raising new questions about the depth of Islamic extremism in a country known for its racial and religious tolerance.

South Africans were jolted all last week by banner headlines about terrorism, most stemming from the arrests on July 25 of two Pretoria-area men during a raid on a suspected hide-out for Al Qaeda in Gujrat, Pakistan. The raid resulted in the detention of 14 suspects, including Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian accused of masterminding the bombings of the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

Gujrat's police commissioner told The Associated Press last week that the two Pretoria men ''had some terror plans for South Africa'' and maps of several cities here.

The country's newspapers, citing anonymous sources, have detailed a sheaf of planned attacks against financial institutions and sites frequented by American tourists. By various accounts, the men had plans to attack the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the Sheraton Hotel and the American Embassy in Pretoria, the national Parliament, a waterfront tourist complex in Cape Town and even the Queen Elizabeth 2 as it steamed into the harbors of Durban or Cape Town.

The two arrested men were identified as Feroz Ganchi, a 30-year-old doctor, and Zubair Ismail, 20, a student of Islamic studies. Their families insist that they have no connection to Al Qaeda and that they flew to Pakistan on a hiking expedition. South Africa's government says it has yet to gain access to the men, but it denounced the reports as baseless and needlessly alarming.

''This is a case of shouting 'fire' in a crowded cinema,'' the spokesman for President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet, Joel Netshitenzhe, said at a news conference on Wednesday.

But South Africans were greeted Thursday by fresh reports that another South African Muslim, a 29-year-old man, was quietly arrested Tuesday in Mexico near the United States border after the authorities found irregularities in his travel documents. A spokeswoman for the South African police intelligence division declined to provide any details, saying the case was under investigation.

The disclosures last week follow the national police service's contention in May -- derided by some at the time -- that it thwarted a Qaeda plot to disrupt South Africa's national elections the previous month by expelling five people suspected of being terrorists.

By some accounts last week, however, the May expulsions and the July arrests were both part of a larger Qaeda operation in South Africa. That is raising uncomfortable questions in a country that has lately considered Islamic terrorism to be Kenya and Tanzania's problem, not South Africa's.

''We've come to assume that the period of stability and nonterrorist headlines over the last few years is going to continue,'' Peter Gastrow, a terrorism analyst who heads the Cape Town office of South Africa's Institute for Security Studies, said in a telephone interview. ''We need more information now, in order to know whether we need to tighten up our security.''

Only 2 percent of South Africa's 45 million people are Muslim. An overwhelming majority of them -- blacks and ethnic Indians, concentrated in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban -- embrace a moderate, tolerant form of Islam, Mr. Gastrow said. But among a small -- some say growing -- number of adherents, extremism has flourished.

In the past decade, police arrests and prosecutions severely weakened two Muslim groups, Qibla and People Against Gangsterism and Terrorism, the latter a Cape Town-based association identified as a terrorist organization by the State Department in 2001.

In Durban, the Islamic Propagation Center International has long been financed by the bin Laden family in Saudi Arabia, and its founder, Ahmed Deedat, who is now dead, was a vocal anti-Semite and ardent backer of Osama bin Laden.

Support for radical Islam is evident in some Muslim neighborhoods in major cities, where T-shirts, banners and tapes espousing Qaeda causes are not difficult to buy.

Most experts, however, see South Africa less as a breeding ground for terrorists than as a staging ground. ''In many ways, it's a more logical choice than Kenya or Tanzania,'' said Peter Chalk, a native Zimbabwean and an international security specialist at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, Calif.

''It has a very good financial and transport infrastructure compared to the rest of Africa,'' he continued. ''At the same time, it's characterized by very porous borders. It lies contiguous to sources of weaponry, especially Mozambique and Angola. There's a lot of corruption, which enables the easy movement of funds as well as personnel. And there's a prolific organized crime presence, much of which is Nigerian, and that can be used to cover the movement or arms and personnel as well.''

A number of African members of Al Qaeda have used South Africa as a rest stop in their efforts to avoid detection. And corruption in the government's Home Affairs office is blamed for the common use of stolen South African passports by criminals and, increasingly, terrorists. A raid early this year on a London safe house used by Qaeda operatives yielded ''boxes and boxes'' of South African passports, the government said in May.

At the same time, Mr. Chalk said, South Africa's Western values -- and its status as a preferred locale for the world's major news media -- also make it a potentially tempting target for Qaeda-style attacks.

''South Africa may not be particularly in line with U.S. policies on Israel, or the Palestinians, or Iraq,'' he said. ''But certainly South Africa is part and parcel of the global capitalist system. And the global impact of something happening in South Africa, a place far more developed that other neighboring countries, is far greater.''

Photos: A South African policeman stood guard outside the American Embassy in Pretoria. Newspapers reported the embassy was a target of plotters. (Photo by Themba Hadebe/Associated Press); The South African Parliament was another reported target of Islamic extremists. Members were sworn in earlier this year in Cape Town. (Photo by Obed Zilwa/Associated Press); Even the Queen Elizabeth 2 was said to be a planned target in Cape Town or Durban. Here, it was escorted by a British frigate last year. (Photo by Royal Navy, via European Pressphoto Agency)